Saturday 19 February 2011

Galaxy of Cars

Entry time to display at Galaxy of Cars is supposed to be well before 10am when the public descends, so we planned to arrive at around 9am. Driving along Great North Rd, through Pt Chev just before 9, we came upon the queue to enter the site. Yep, the queue was all the way along Motions Rd, past the Zoo, and around the corner into Great North Rd. Hmmm, that’s not good. Worse still for a car that needs to be started off a jump pack (I mistakenly left the dash light on from the last escapade—oh no !!).

Not fancying sitting in a long queue and letting the old girl heat up unnecessarily, and not yet having had the requisite morning coffee (or breakfast), we decided to head back to Pt Chev and grab some food and caffeine from a local café (The Corner Café, Pt Chev Road: reasonable coffee, good eggs, but the bacon and French toast could’ve been cooked to be a little more crispier).

About an hour later, having had our fill, we decided to try the MOTAT Meola Road entrance. It seemed that many others had also had the same idea, and I think the guy on the gate had pretty much had enough of people trying to get in that way. So it was back to Motions Rd, from which the queue had mercifully disappeared. Unfortunately, the messy organisation remained and we were initially refused entry until we fished out the parking card and whinged about not wanting to sit in a queue for goodness knows how long at 9am in the morning.

Anyway, we did manage to get past the militant gatekeepers and proceeded to our allotted space to find everyone else had set up and were having a natter. John and Jan had arrived around 7:30 am (crikey - that’s barely daybreak for me!!) to grab any bargains that may have been on offer at the associated swapmeet. From the sounds of it, they must have been just about the first people there.

Opposite us with a huge turnout was the Jowett / Bradford club who picked up 2nd prize for club display. One-time member Mike Brain was just down from us with his Bradford pick-up, complete with a running Bradford display motor on the back. This motor ticked over all day, and attracted plenty of attention from the crowd. Terry and Brenda were also attending in Terry’s Bradford, parked just across from us. We caught up with ex-members Gary and Raewyn Norton who had their usual spot with the Stationary Engine people.

It was quite a warm day, and around 3pm after the presentations, people began to drift off home.